The Lutetia Patrimoine Fund, a Paris-based UCITS absolute-return fund specialising in merger arbitrage, celebrated its first birthday last week with a 26-fold increase in assets under management.

The first offering from independent asset manager Lutetia Capital, the weekly-dealing Patrimoine Fund launched with $3 million on 27 November 2009. Since then assets have steadily increased to approximately $80 million.

With a year-to-date Sharpe ratio of 3.46, the fund ranks #1 out of 299 funds and funds-of-funds in Bloomberg’s “Equity Market Neutral” category (USD class I, through 2 November 2010).

The fund’s YTD performance also puts it at or near the top of the ‘event driven’ category in several databases for UCITS hedge funds. It is considered event-driven because of its focus on the stocks of companies undergoing mergers and acquisitions.

Lutetia Capital co-founder Fabrice Seiman said: “We launched the Lutetia Patrimoine Fund with the goal of democratising hedge fund strategies, using a strategy that is rare among UCITS funds. We have shown not only that our strategy can work, but that it can excel in delivering consistent, risk-adjusted returns to investors—within UCITS guidelines for transparency and liquidity. As we always say, slow and steady wins the race. With the M&A cycle continuing to accelerate, we see great things for this fund.”

The Lutetia Patrimoine Fund is available through its custodian, BNP Paribas.